Practical Journal Entry - Travis Shaw & Shane Sofia

Friday – Sunday

October 5-7, 2012

Submitted to: M.Pascoe

Friday: We started our weekend practical Friday morning in the greenhouse with Jeff. Jeff helped explain to us what we were to do over the course of the weekend. After our meeting with Jeff we moved ourselves into the tractor bay, where we spent at least 30 minutes signing out equipment and completing the proper circle checks.  We noticed a few key things that we discovered over the course of the weekend that we should have asked Jeff before he left. We noticed that the battery to the trailer works one time then the battery is completely drained. Travis completed the circle check for the trailer and it appeared to work but that was not the case. After all the equipment was signed out we started to pick and remove all weeds and suckers in the gardens. We were unable to get all the suckers due to lack of time.  After the weeding was complete, Jeff assigned Travis to plant the extra trees that were added to our list. While Travis was planting, I was at the front of the school re-tying and staking the Ginko that was added to our list and planting the Tsuga in the conifer garden in front of K building.

 After the trees were planted we moved onto planting the Taxus.

We noticed that it was fairly easy to plant them with one person, so we decided I would cut down one of the Malus trees and Travis would continue with planting. At the end of the day we washed off our equipment and helped Pedro close up shop.  (Cleaning the tractor bay)

Saturday: On Saturday Travis was only available to work from 8-11am, so we decided to get as much mulch as possible before he left. We were only able to get on trailer load down and on a tarp for me to work off of because the trailer battery wasn’t working properly. We put the battery on the charger for some of the day Saturday but it did not work (we used the trickle battery charger). After Travis left I helped Pedro and Josh dispose of their waste at the compound, after that I planted the last Taxus between the burning bushes. After lunch I laid mulch until 4pm then I started to do, my clean up. We were unable to complete all of the mulching due to Travis being absent and the trailer acting up.

Sunday: On Sunday we started off our morning by planting Piceaabies‘Slim Jim’ in between burning bushes in the corner of the conifer garden closest to H café.

After the tree was planted I staked and tied it while Travis went to pick up mulch. When the mulch arrived at the conifer garden, we laid out a tarp and started to hand bomb the mulch out of the trailer due to the battery situation. After the mulch was out of the trailer, I stayed to lay it out, while Travis went to get another load of mulch. Then we took lunch, during lunch we put the trailer on the plug in charger for an hour then it worked once or twice before dying on us again. By the end of the day we finished installing as much mulch as possible, and with our last half hour we started to do our cleanup, take pictures do a walk around for equipment and, make sure all the proper paperwork was completed for the trees we planted.

In conclusion: with the amount of work we were given and the situation with Travis on Saturday we are satisfied with the amount of work that was completed.  We think that if we were together for the whole weekend all the tasks would have been completed.